Jay Harvey Upstage

Shannon Lee impressed the IVCI jury in 2018. As compatible as pianists working with IVCI participants have long been, new competition terrain in true duo partnership was explored Tuesday night with the Indianapolis return of Shannon Lee, a laureate in the 2018 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. For five years, the Canadian violinist has been collaborating with Russian-born pianist Arseniy Gusev. That's included two recordings that were reflected in the program they offered at the Indiana History Center. Composers have long emphasized equality between the two instruments in bringing their respective techniques and modes of expression into partnership. Works for violin and piano, many of them sonatas, abound in the repertoire.  It was like catnip to the acknowledged master Elliott Carter, an explorer of oppositions in music who found the instruments' physical differences — "between stroking and striking," as he put it — a delectable challenge in creatin...

Martinez plays Falla masterpiece with the ICO.   Marketing this month's Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra concert had the advantage of a glamorous guest soloist, and the organization even used most of the phrase in the title of the work Gabriela Martinez  played in labeling the performance.  "Gardens of Spain" was the concert's billing, highlighting the pianist's  performance with the orchestra in Manuel de Falla's "Nights in the Gardens of Spain." Still, the ICO didn't sell short the world premiere also on the program: a new work by the prolific composer Stacy Garrop, alluringly titled "Chroma," a six-movement salute to colors that the fine lighting system of the Schrott Center illuminated as the composition unfolded under the astute direction of Matthew Kraemer. I first became acquainted with Garrop's artistry in concert more than a dozen years ago with her folklore-linked "Silver Dagger." Since then, when the Lincoln ...

 "Howdy!" is the one-word greeting Branford Marsalis offered to the large crowd gathered to hear his quartet Friday night at the Payne & Mencias Palladium. He may have dropped the salute as something implicitly Hoosier, but it would be hard to interpret it as looking down his nose at us. Neither effusive nor tight-lipped in his commentary, the veteran saxophonist showed the friendly demeanor that has always contrasted with the lecturing stance of trumpeter Wynton, the other household name among the distinguished New Orleans musical family.  He led one long set at  the Allied Solutions Center for the Performing Arts jazz series, fronting a long- Branford Marsalis Quartet: By the third number, the jackets were off. intact group including Joey Calderazzo, piano; Eric Revis, bass, and Justin Faulkner, drums. Early in the performance came two catchy originals by Calderazzo, "Conversation Among the Ruins" and "The Mighty Sword." In between there was a zesty...

We are trained to believe in individual moral responsibility, but it's not making excuses to insist on the larger picture of understanding its limits. How are some of us more stamped than others by inescapable influences that rob us of agency? "Machinal" suggests strongly that for women, particularly a century ago, freedom of action is shaped conclusively by social limits affecting love, work, and family connections. The 1928 play by Sophie Treadwell is worth the expressionist revival that Southbank Theatre Company gives it through next Sunday at Shelton Auditorium. The theatrical style, conscientiously shepherded here under Marcia Eppich-Harris' direction, means that the feeling of events, especially protagonist-centered, is as important as the facts involved. There's no separation between what happens to the main character and how she processes her experience, symbolized and dream-linked as it is. Narrative orderliness is immaterial in this sort of storytelling...

Angela Brown, soprano from Indianapolis On the cultural high ground, no one minds departure from the formulas of presentation, at least when  there's something fresh about it. For symphony orchestras, the time-worn layout, in order, runs: overture, concerto, intermission, symphony. Some of that is intact this weekend as the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra 's Classical Series resumes at Hilbert Circle Theatre. The orchestra's first of two full-length concerts had an overture by a mainstream composer to start with and a symphony by a master to conclude.  To help support the overall feeling of novelty, the overture was the largely unfamiliar one to Weber's opera "Euryanthe," a poster child of good composition let down by a poor libretto. The symphony was the easy-to-overlook No. 8 in F major by Beethoven, a work memorably characterized by Schumann as "a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants" (the seventh and ninth symphonies).  The real novelty ...

Barthold Kuijken, conductor and traverso soloist   If there is plenty of evidence that progress in the musical flowering called the High Baroque can be justly considered "Towards Telemann," as   Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra' s concert Sunday was titled, a host of influences he absorbed must have been responsible. That was explored fruitfully in the program put together and led by its artistic director, Barthold Kuijken, at the University of Indianapolis.  Georg Philipp Telemann's breadth of musical creation was fed by his receptivity to French, Italian, and German styles, types of patronage, and modes of expression. His appeal to his contemporaries and shortly after his time (1681-1767) was straightforward and broadly based, thanks to a succession of courtly appointments that made him more widely known than his contemporary, J.S. Bach. And the theater bug bit him as well. His work as an impresario and composer of opera helped, giving him a reputation for facil...